squirrel

joined 2 years ago
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An Instagram post by Alex Graham has stirred up a hornet's nest of controversy by suggesting that comics by marginalized groups are overrated

 

For context: The popular game GeoGuessr may look like it is build upon Google Maps/Streetview, but in the background it is fueled by an active community of players who handpick interesting locations to "guess", in order to keep the game interesting and fun.

Today the community published this note:

We, the creators of a considerable share of GeoGuessr’s most popular maps, have decided to make our maps unplayable in protest of GeoGuessr AB’s decision to host a World Championship wildcard tourney at the Esports World Cup (EWC) in Riyadh.

The EWC is a sportswashing tool used by the government of Saudi Arabia to distract from and conceal its horrific human rights record.

Groups targeted by the government include women, LGBTQ people, apostates and atheists, political dissenters, migrant workers in the Kafala system, religious minorities, and many others. The subjugation of these groups is extensive and pervasive. Members of these groups are routinely subjected to discrimination, imprisonment, torture, and even public executions. These severe human rights violations are well-documented and indisputable.

By participating in the EWC, GeoGuessr is contributing to that sportswashing agenda, which is designed to take attention away from Saudi Arabia's human rights violations.

The GeoGuessr community is diverse and includes many members of groups that would be harshly persecuted were they to live in Saudi Arabia. In solidarity with those currently residing in Saudi Arabia while being subject to oppression, as well as members of the community who would feel and be unsafe attending the tournament in Riyadh, we have decided to black out our maps by replacing all their previous locations with random garbage locations, rendering them unplayable.

This blackout includes dozens of creators and their maps, including a supermajority of the most popular competitively relevant world maps. It will continue until we see action from GeoGuessr; specifically, we demand that GeoGuessr cancels its wildcard event in Saudi Arabia and commits to not hosting any events there as long as it continues its oppressive regime.

You don't play games with human rights.

Thank you for reading.

The GeoGuessr mapping community

Original post on Reddit

 
 

Television and radio are already heavily monitored and censored. Next up: the digital arena, including social media.

 

SAG-AFTRA claims Epic didn’t negotiate video game AI voice replacement terms.

 

Deadline speaks to Hollywood’s fiercest advocates against Trump’s DEI rollbacks — Roger Ross Williams, Ashley Eakin and Asha Chai-Chang.

Archived version: https://archive.is/x5Dpi

 

Bungie, the studio behind the Halo series that is now owned by Sony, said it is investigating concerns over the “unauthorized use” of the artist’s work.

Archived version without paywall: https://archive.is/cdKUn

 

The house style of the New York Times is severely outdated. Depending on the topic, the newspaper’s purportedly impartial tone instead reads as smug, self-amused, and deeply lazy. The results are disastrous when applied to a recent article which sincerely considers the idea that Rachel Griffin-Accurso, the popular children’s entertainer known as Ms. Rachel, might […]

Archived version without paywall: https://archive.is/yE3mF

 

SUPERHOT VR released in 2017. Then in 2021 the game’s entire story was removed.

 

Large language models are reflections of the people who program them.

Archived version: https://archive.is/U2Wv2

 

Over 20 years, AbleGamers has become synonymous with the accessibility movement as its presence and influence grew across the industry. However, new reports from former employees and members of the accessibility community describe abuse, financial mismanagement from leadership, and a board that failed to protect its employees.

 

A French court on Tuesday found Gérard Depardieu guilty of sexually assaulting two women on a film set, sentencing the French film icon to an 18-month suspended prison term.

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 3 months ago

There are already some good suggestions in the other comments, I just want to add a point: Anxiety attacks can be a problem by themselves, but they may also be a symptom of something else. Insofar it is good to sort things out with a professional (therapist or psychologist) who can do the tests to determine what the root cause is.

Having said that, a personal addition: Mental and physical exhaustion can exacerbate mental health symptoms of all kinds and - to me - it sounds worth pointing out that you experience these anxiety attacks at or after work. So anything you can do to reduce the exhaustion may already help a little to alleviate symptoms. If you have a possibility to slow down a bit and ensure that you are well hydrated and that your blood sugar doesn't drop too much (ie. make sure you aren't famished) that could already help you to get a better grip on these anxiety attacks.

Either way: Stay strong, friend!

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 38 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Fun fact: The mouse was already invented in the 60s and was part of the famous "Mother of all Demos" which shaped modern computing like no other single event since then.

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 17 points 3 months ago

Unfortunately, the UK does not need to import transphobia from anywhere. The UK's TERFs pioneered modern transphobia in many cases and they have been at it for a loooooong time. In many cases, it was the UK's TERFs who came up with a ton of the now common transphobic arguments which the US and other places adopted from them, rather than the other way around.

Mind, they are 110% fascists and they love to sit down with the US' Heritage Foundation and other fascist US orgs in order to coordinate with them.

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Underground tunnels are not part of the US' jurisdiction and thus the US government has no obligation to save them.

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 3 months ago

As other people have already mentioned: No, you are not paranoid. The pattern that you recognise is fake outrage or ragebait.

If you have some time to spare and are curiously about how the right-wing outrage machine works, I can highly recommend the video essay "Stellar Blade: The Fake Outrage" by Shaun. His videos can be a little dry, but he goes to great lengths to pick apart a single example (the video game Stellar Blade) and how the right-wing first embraced the game (in the name of their fight against "wokeism, DEI,..."), only to then do a full about-face when the game did not turn out exactly as they had envisioned (and claim that the game was full of "wokeism, DEI,...").

It's a long video, but it does a very good job to expose the mix of unsubstantiated claims, copy-pasted accusations and ultimately fake outrage that underlies right-wing behavior these days.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPsSguYNHpk

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 3 months ago

I am not a liberal, so I can totally be outraged about what the article is describing and point out the Guardian's contribution to that particular problem.

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 3 months ago

Here is some news coverage of what's going on in the Guardian. Mind, some of the articles are a little older, but the overall situation hasn't improved. The only thing that has changed is the normalization of the transphobic content the Guardian has put out over the years.

The articles below contain links to various Guardian articles

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

And let's not forget that the Guardian has had no qualms to participate in transphobic witchhunting for years. No matter what hand-wringing they now do, they share a part of the responsibility for it coming this far and probably won't stop pushing transphobia either...

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Personal note: And let's not forget that the Guardian has been fine with pushing transphobia, so they contribute to the anti-queer sentiment that empowers anti-queer groups' attempts to censor books. Something the Guardian surely won't acknowledge any time soon...

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 49 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Say nothing more!

(Yes, I know it's not the original, but cat girls feel more appropriate in this context.)

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 20 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I can't take articles such as this one seriously if they don't mention right-wing terrorists recruiting through the same channels and means. That has been a known problem for more than a decade.

Treating online radicalisation solely as a problem of people with a migrant/non-European/Muslim/... background is very telling and borders on lying by omission.

[–] squirrel@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

“Pure feminism is nolens volens radical. It necessarily excludes (...) moderation, restriction, half-measures. Being feminist in no way means wanting to obtain a right for a small number of women at the expense of other women à tout prix - being feminist only ever means fighting for the overall liberation of the entire female sex.”

A quote from her writings (machine-translated from German)

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